Celebrating Sidney Poitier
Recommended Books
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Cinema Civil Rights
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From Al Jolson in blackface to Song of the South, there is a long history of racism in Hollywood film. Yet as early as the 1930s, movie studios carefully vetted their releases, removing racially offensive language like the "N-word." This censorship did not stem from purely humanitarian concerns, but rather from worries about boycotts from civil rights groups and loss of revenue from African American filmgoers. Cinema Civil Rights presents the untold history of how Black audiences, activists, and lobbyists influenced the representation of race in Hollywood in the decades before the 1960s civil rights era. Employing a nuanced analysis of power, Ellen C. Scott reveals how these representations were shaped by a complex set of negotiations between various individuals and organizations. Rather than simply recounting the perspective of film studios, she calls our attention to a variety of other influential institutions, from protest groups to state censorship boards. Scott demonstrates not only how civil rights debates helped shaped the movies, but also how the movies themselves provided a vital public forum for addressing taboo subjects like interracial sexuality, segregation, and lynching. Emotionally gripping, theoretically sophisticated, and meticulously researched, Cinema Civil Rights presents us with an in-depth look at the film industry's role in both articulating and censoring the national conversation on race.
ISBN: 9780813571379Publication date: 2015-01-14 -
Coming Out to the Mainstream
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Coming Out to the Mainstream is a collection of essays written from a range of perspectives, from scholars to film producers, who seek to contextualize and reframe New Queer Cinema from a 21st century perspective-decades after Stonewall, the emergence of the HIV-AIDS crisis, and the initial years of the gay marriage movement. These essays situate themselves in the 21st century as an attempt to assess what appears to be a mainstreaming of New Queer Cinema, a current wave of New Queer Cinema film that holds potential for influencing film viewers beyond the original limits of an independent film audience, critics, and the academy. Specifically, these essays examine whether and how the filmmaking styles and themes of New Queer Cinema have been mainstreamed-rendered familiar as points of interest in popular culture of the 21st century, challenging a queer-phobic cultural climate, and providing an incisive set of visual representations that can help inform continuing debates over queerness in public culture. For instance, what do we make of the burgeoning number of queer stories that are circulating not just in arthouses but in mainstream media? How much of a transformation in our collective sensibilities does this trend represent, and will it carry us toward a cultural landscape where identity is commonly understood and valued as multiple, fluid, and performative? While the editors of this collection find there is significant evidence that New Queer Cinema has achieved success in forging greater mainstream acceptance of queer perspectives in cinema and everyday culture, the essays we present offer a variety of voices, a timely set of observations on queer images in film, television, and popular culture.
ISBN: 1443823791Publication date: 2010-10-01 -
Disability Representation in Film, TV, and Print Media
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Using sources from a wide variety of print and digital media, this book discusses the need for ample and healthy portrayals of disability and neurodiversity in the media, as the primary way that most people learn about conditions. It contains 13 newly written chapters drawing on representations of disability in popular culture from film, television, and print media in both the Global North and the Global South, including the United States, Canada, India, and Kenya. Although disability is often framed using a limited range of stereotypical tropes such as victims, supercrips, or suffering patients, this book shows how disability and neurodiversity are making their way into more mainstream media productions and publications with movies, television shows, and books featuring prominent and even lead characters with disabilities or neurodiversity. Disability Representation in Film, TV, and Print Media will be of interest to all scholars and students of disability studies, cultural studies, film studies, gender studies, and sociology more broadly.
ISBN: 9781003035114Publication date: 2021-08-19 -
Making Movies Black
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This is the second volume of Thomas Cripps's definitive history of African-Americans in Hollywood, covering the period from World War II through the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Examining this period through the prism of popular culture, Making Movies Black shows how movies anticipated America's changing ideas about race. Cripps contends that founded in the liberal rhetoric of the war years--with the catchwords brotherhood and tolerance--came movies which defined a new African-American presence both in film and in American society at large.
ISBN: 0195037731Publication date: 1993-05-20 -
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Slow Fade to Black
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Set against the backdrop of the black struggle in society, Slow Fade to Black is the definitive history of African-American accomplishment in film--both before and behind the camera--from the earliest movies through World War II. As he records the changing attitudes toward African-Americansboth in Hollywood and the nation at large, Cripps explores the growth of discrimination as filmmakers became more and more intrigued with myths of the Old South: the "lost cause" aspect of the Civil War, the stately mansions and gracious ladies of the antebellum South, the "happy" slaves singing inthe fields. Cripps shows how these characterizations culminated in the blatantly racist attitudes of Griffith's The Birth of a Nation, and how this film inspired the N.A.A.C.P. to campaign vigorously--and successfully--for change. While the period of the 1920s to 1940s was one replete withHollywood stereotypes (blacks most often appeared as domestics or "natives," or were portrayed in shiftless, cowardly "Stepin Fetchit" roles), there was also an attempt at independent black production--on the whole unsuccessful. But with the coming of World War II, increasing pressures for a wideruse of blacks in films, and calls for more equitable treatment, African-Americans did begin to receive more sympathetic roles, such as that of Sam, the piano player in the 1942 classic Casablanca.A lively, thorough history of African-Americans in the movies, Slow Fade to Black is also a perceptive social commentary on evolving racial attitudes in this country during the first four decades of the twentieth century.
ISBN: 9780195021301Publication date: 1977-02-03
Diversity in Television and Film
- Annenberg Inclusion Initiative: The Annenberg Inclusion Initiative is the leading think tank in the world studying diversity and inclusion in entertainment through original research and sponsored projects. Beyond research, the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative develops targeted, research-based solutions to tackle inequality.
- BFF Foundation: The BFFoundation is a non-profit organization focused on promoting underrepresented voices of diverse storytellers. They amplify storytellers who identify as female, non-binary, LGBTQIA+, BIPOC, and people with disabilities in entertainment and media. They also host the Bentonville Film Festival.
- Black representation in film and TV: The challenges and impact of increasing diversity: This report by McKinsey & Company discusses the economic costs of a lack of diversity in the film and television industries.
- Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film
The Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film at San Diego State University is home to the longest running and most comprehensive studies of women in film and television. Dedicated to producing extensive and timely research, studies generated by the Center provide the foundation for a realistic and meaningful discussion of women’s on-screen representation and behind-the-scenes employment.
- FilmDis
FilmDis is a media monitoring organization offering research studies, media projects, consulting, and reporting on the presence of disabled characters and performers in the media.
- GADIM (Global Alliance for Disability in Media & Entertainment)
The Global Alliance for Disability in Media and Entertainment was created to promote the inclusion of persons with disabilities in mass media.
- Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media
Founded by Academy-Award® winning actor and advocate Geena Davis in 2004, The Institute is the first research-based organization working within the media and entertainment industry to engage, educate, and influence content creators, marketers and audiences about the importance of eliminating unconditional bias, highlighting gender balance, challenging stereotypes, creating role models and scripting a wide variety of strong female characters in entertainment and media that targets and influences children ages 11 and under.
- Hollywood Diversity Report 2020
Sponsored by UCLA Social Sciences, this is the seventh in a series of annual reports to examine relationships between diversity and the bottom line in the Hollywood entertainment industry. It considers the top 200 theatrical film releases in 2018 and 2019, ranked by global box office, in order to document the degree to which women and people of color are present in front of and behind the camera. Statistics are included. Part 1 is Film, Part 2 is TV.
- National Hispanic Media Coalition
The National Hispanic Media Coalition (NHMC) is a woman-led non-profit civil and human rights organization that was founded to eliminate hate, discrimination, and racism toward the Latino communities. We educate and increase Latinx visibility from our policy work in Washington D.C. to our media advocacy work in Hollywood, where we collaborate, create, and connect Latinx talent with the entertainment industry. At NHMC, we focus on all forms of media because it is one of the most influential and powerful institutions that shape society’s attitudes, values, and beliefs.
Movies
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Fabulous! the Story of Queer Cinema (2006)
An overview of the recent history of gay and lesbian cinema, from Kenneth Anger's Fireworks (1947) to Ang Lee's Brokeback mountain (2005).
ISBN: 1932134751Publication date: 2006
